This is the Lesson
by LondonBelow
Summary: Roger has many voices, and each of them has something to teach. preRENT to postRENT [won at speedrent]


Disclaimer: Anything you recognize is not mine, including but not limited to: RENT, "O'er the Hills" (which is quite a nice song), Musetta's Waltz 

Roger knew how to communicate. He had so many ways of making himself understood, so many voices. Many people think his only voice was the one he lowered and exhaled into the microphone. I know better. I know he could more than communicate, he could teach and know with one glance, one fingertip. I know the manner manners in which Roger could unman anyone, especially me.

**First:**

He had his guitar. Of all his possessions, this meant the most. Oh, he loved to feel grown-up and badass in the leather jacket he bought for three weeks' allowance, lawn-mowing and dog-walking money when he was fifteen. He had his favorite socks, knee-length stockings with stripes which he insisted made him look like a pirate. He even had a pewter cross, despite having abandoned Catholicism early on. These things mattered, but the guitar mattered more. The guitar allowed him to reach out. When Roger felt alone, when he felt that his soul had shrunk so far away no one could touch him or see him or care about him, he played something sad and sorry.

I remember the first time Roger played this trick. I was on my bed, writing a letter to my mother, who worried, as thoroughly as she disapproved of my decision to run away and pursue art. A door slammed, the couch squeak, and Roger began to play.

It was not Musetta's Waltz. It was a surprisingly simple song. I rose from my bed as in a trance at those dripping, heavy notes. They fell like blooddrops into a koi pond. By the time I reached the doorway he was nearly finished with his song.

Roger sat cross-legged on the couch, the acoustic guitar held across his lap. He sang softly, his head rolling, eyes closed, moving as though at the mercy of his own song. I strained to hear his voice, but caught not a single word. The song made my knees weak and my breath heavy. I clutched the doorjamb, astounded at the power of this boy.

When Roger finished the song, Collins came and sat beside him. Roger set the guitar on the floor, gently. Collins cupped the back of his head, forcing Roger to look at him. It was betrayal when he opened his eyes. This being, this entity of power, charmer to my snake, was nothing. He was a little boy, his eyes full of tears, his body wracked with a sorrow he could not contain.

Roger crumpled against Collins, sobbing. I turned away and never again made mention of that afternoon.

That was Roger's first voice, his guitar, and this is the lesson he taught me with it: you are powerless before me.

**Second:**

Roger had his hands.

I heard her before I met her. The springs of his mattress squeaked, he moaned, and I lay awake staring into the darkness and not completely understanding why I felt a burning anger in my gut. He was inconsiderate, yes, lovemaking well into the night, but this was nothing unusual. After all, this was the loft into which two men might stumble, carousing, leaning on one another so that they nearly toppled together and giggling insanely. It was Collins who did this, and Mark with him, bellowing, "Why walk when you can _stagger_?"

But that night, it was just me and Roger and his girl, and I heard her moan. It was the strangest sound, like a willow weeping through a foggy predawn. There was something raw in the noise, something innocent and completely unaffected.

The following morning, she smiled at me over her Captain Crunch and waved her spoon. She held her fingers overlapping then opened them, looking at Roger. He motioned with his hands, pointing to me, pointing to himself and moving his hands, pointing at the floor. The girl smiled. She wriggled her fingers and brought her hands towards her face with a questioning expression. Roger tilted his hand rapidly.

He was like that sometimes: thoroughly rude. I had no idea what he was saying as he and his girlfriend sat at the table, gesticulating and grinning like a coven of ten-year-olds with their own language. She waved again at me and forced Roger to make an introduction.

It was April through that I learned of Roger's second language. He would later joke, as Mimi tried to teach him Spanish words, "I'm sorry, baby, I'm whitebread American. Monolingual." I knew otherwise, though, because I had seen his hands dance.

Once, I saw Roger having a nightmare. He made tiny noises like a kitten yet to find its voice, but he spoke feverishly, his hands flailing like the legs of a man hung by a rope.

Roger used his knowledge of ASL to communicate with the deaf and Deaf. He never lorded it over the hearing who knew nothing of this blurring language. He rarely spoke of it. But he used the attribute of hearing this sign language. He used his eyes.

It was the day I announced my marriage. I had decided to do it all at once, tell everybody, and I think I did right by them. I was polite. I invited them to the wedding. "And nothing has to change," I added. "I'm buying this building for exactly that reason, so that nothing has to change. You guys are golden."

I knew enough by then to understand the four letters Roger's hands spelled. E-N-V-Y. It was, too. It had been months since I satisfied myself with the purity and depth of color on canvas. The smell or turpentine was fading from my hands. I had lost my muse, my spark, while the others continued to excel and produce--Mark filmed, Roger sang, Collins thought and Maureen objected. I felt less than them, less good, less worthy. And I was jealous.

"We can still be friends. I hope we still are friends," I concluded.

Roger looked at me. He waited until Maureen had flounced off, declaring me a sell-out, and Mark and Collins had offered their polite if hollow congratulations. Then Roger looked right through my and said, "You hope, but you know it can't work," which is precisely the fear I was thinking.

The voice of Roger's hands taught me this lesson: you are nothing. You have no power I cannot counter. It was not a cruel lesson, but brutally honest and painful nevertheless.

**Third:**

Two voices issued from Roger's throat.

The first was high and pure and certain. It was a voice trained by a church choirmaster and by imitating Brian Henley. It was the voice with which he crooned along to his guitar. Roger was never an extraordinary songwriter, but he had a good voice and he was pretty. I went to a few of his gigs, after we stopped speaking, when I wanted to hear the gentle voice instead of the one he spat at me.

Roger never learned to project. His perfect voice sang like counselors at a campfire. He could ride the moon with his high notes and dip to the sea on the lows, but he had a set of lungs like paper bags. Roger never took in a deep breath and sent his voice booming across a crowded room the way Maureen or Collins did. His singing voice was soft and shy and attractive because it dared not flirt.

One thing to be said for those songs, though: they were willing enough. All it took was a tiny request.

When Mark came to New York City, he had run from his second year at Brown. He was a sheltered eighteen-year-old, familiar with the inner workings of bake sales at the Jewish Community Center. He knew how to fold his underpants. He was a good kid, a great visionary, but young and scared.

Roger was probably about Mark's age, maybe a little younger. Collins knew. He and I would tease them, and we each had our respective friend to mock. I said little to Mark, but Collins was amiably horrible to Roger. "I really shouldn't do this," he would say, handing Roger a beer. Roger would laugh his quiet laugh, more motion than noise, occasionally stick out his tongue, and drink.

He and Mark did not exactly hit it off immediately, but when Mark had his first bout of crippling homesickness, Roger was there. He held Mark against his chest, one hand around his shoulders and the other protecting his head, rocking him gently. "Shh, shh, it's okay, shh…"

The song he sang was a war song. I knew that. It was a tune with words fitted to the Napoleonic wars, an old Anglo melody, but perhaps it was the quiet sobbing that transformed that war ballad into a lullaby. "O'er the hills and o'er the main/Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain/King George commands and we obey/Over the hills and far away." It carried on romantically in that vein for some time, with "along the road to come-what-may" and "you are with me night and day." By the time Roger had finished his song, Mark was calm.

Roger held him for a moment longer, petting his hair, then asked, "Are you all right?"

But it was the song that mattered. It was his gentleness and the warm embrace rolling off his tongue.

I doubt I was the only one among our company with a rough upbringing. I doubt I was the only one who cried himself to sleep into his pillow. What held me apart from the others, at least to begin with, was that I believed their lies. I should not have wept because boys don't cry. It was weakness, and I must embody strength, seek power--this is something I thought up alone, which never ceased to disturb me.

His lullaby, his singing voice taught me this lesson: it's okay to cry. It's okay to experience weakness. Roger held Mark and sang and tore down everything I had known.

**Fourth:**

His speaking voice was the opposite.

Roger weighed and measured each of his words carefully, as carefully as the dealer who sold him glassine bags of happiness for ten bucks a smile. He never used two words when one would suffice, even "Thanks" for "Thank you." Roger said, "Thanks," fairly often. If offered a cup of coffee, he said it. If invited out, he would either grab his coat or shake his head and say, "But thanks." It was a safe word. No one was hurt with gratitude.

He mumbled. The condition worsened after April, after the death sentence, when Roger's shoulders curled inwards and his eyes never rose above a person's chest. He occasionally flicked his gaze to Mark's face or Collins', but it was easiest for him to look at me and speak clearly to me, project the words like a ten-year-old with chewed up paper and a straw.

That voice expressed Roger the least. He used it little and poorly, and something in his tone consequently constantly sounded like a rusty drawbridge. The things he said were impersonal. "It's raining," he would observe, or, "Could I…?" which, accompanied by a gesture and a mutter of appreciation, often earned him a cigarette.

With this voice he rarely used, Roger taught me a lesson Sun Tzu himself would have lauded. We were in the park: me, Mark, Collins and Roger. The three of us were joking elaborately about Pentagon spies, discreetly pointing to individuals and discussing their part in this espionage. Roger did not participate, but was quiet as usual, hands in his pockets, eyes on the ground. He was, we thought, newly off withdrawal.

About a day later, Roger stumbled out of his room, glass-eyed and smiling. He was high. That day in the park, all it had taken was thirty seconds and none of us even noticed. Roger taught me, then, how to play an advantage. He taught me how to use nothingness, silence, how to be sly and to hide in plain sight.

Collins and Mark were furious with him. I was awed.

**Finally:**

Roger no longer plays his guitar. His hands are weak. The skin is waxy and stretched taut, tendons and veins bulging, knuckles suddenly huge. His nerves are dying: there are no hairs on his fingers and few on the backs of his hands.

One of those hands is clutched tightly in Mark's. Mark has been sitting awake in the hospital room for days. Whenever Roger wakes for a few moments, he smiles and pets him and speaks of recovery. He strokes fingers without the calluses or endurance for fingerpicking. He touches a wrist lacking the strength for signs. Mark does not see communication. He sees Roger. And Mark holds the hand that held Mimi's hand that once, before I became _this_, held mine.

Roger's singing and speaking voice is no good. He cannot breathe well. A small tube helps him. He occasionally rasps and croaks, but is largely silent, speaking with his face and eyes in a language even a signer could not understand.

Roger's many voices are taken. He lies awake now, breathing. It's all he can do. I stand near the back of the room, wishing I could have done more. I paid his hospital bills, but what can the doctors do? Even AZT is useless now. I wish doctors could do more to cure this man. I wish I could do more than stand and bear witness.

Tears gather in my eyes as I realize this final lesson he has taught me with the crushing voice of his death, the wailing of the monitor and the boy: money is worthless. This I know as I gently close his eyes and thank him. He grows cold as the men whose voice taught so many lessons lessens and lessens into his antithesis.

Silence.

THE END.

As usual... please review?

Roger and April's conversation is, roughly, "He's a neighbor?"

"He lives here."

"Is he friendly?"

"So-so."


End file.
